Aracelis Girmay is of Eritrean heritage[2] and comes from Santa Ana, California.

[3] She attended Connecticut College[4] and earned a Master of Fine Arts from New York University.

[5] Girmay's first collection was Teeth (2007), for which she won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award.

[6] In 2011, Girmay published Kingdom Animalia, for which she was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.

[11] Selecting The Black Maria as a "Pick of the Week" in April 2016, Publishers Weekly described it as "a moving collection of lyrical, image-thick poems that balance on the knife edge separating vulnerability and unapologetic strength.